He opened his eyes once more--for it was that loved voice again--but
the glare from the moon so dazzled him that he could only fancy he saw
the figure of the governess, not a hundred feet away, struggling and
floundering in the clutch of a black creature that beat the air with
enormous wings all round her. He saw her hair streaming out into the
night, and one wing seemed to hang broken and useless at her side.

He was turning over and over, like a piece of wood in the waves of the
sea, and the governess, caught by Fright, the monster of her own
creation, drifted away from his consciousness as a dream melts away in
the light of the morning.... From the gleaming mountains and treeless
plains below Jimbo thought there rose a hollow roar like the mocking
laughter of an immense multitude of people, shaking with mirth. The Moon
had got him at last, and her laughter ran through the heavens like a
wave. Revolving upon his own little axis so swiftly that he neither saw
nor heard anything more, he dropped straight down upon the great
satellite.

The light of the moon flamed up into his eyes and dazzled him.

But what in the world was this?

How could the moon dwindle so suddenly to the size of a mere lamp
flame?

How could the whole expanse of the heavens shrink in an instant to the
limits of a little, cramped room?

In a single second, before he had time to realise that he felt surprise,
the entire memory of his recent experiences vanished from his mind. The
past became an utter blank. Like a wreath of smoke everything melted
away as if it had never been at all. The functions of the brain resumed
their normal course. The delirium of the past few hours was over.

Jimbo was lying at home on his bed in the night-nursery, and his mother
was bending over him. At the foot of the bed stood the doctor in black.
The nurse held a lamp, only half shaded by her hand, as she approached
the bedside.

This lamp was the moon of his delirium--only he had quite forgotten now
that there had ever been any moon at all.

The little thermometer, thrust into his teeth among the stars, was still
in his mouth. A hot-water bottle made his feet glow and burn. And from
the walls of the sick-room came as it were the echoes of
recently-uttered sentences: "Take his temperature! Give him the
medicine the moment he wakes! Put the hot bottle to his feet.... Fetch
the ice-bag.... Quick!"

"Where am I, mother?" he asked in a whisper.

"You're in bed